Continental Philosophy Commons^™

Heidegger: Through Phenomenology To Thought, William J. Richardson

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

Kuhn's Paradigm As A Parable For The Cold War: Incommensurability And Its Discontents From Fuller's Tale Of Harvard To Fleck's Unsung Lvov, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

In a journal issue dedicated to a discussion of Steve Fuller's Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times, I argue that Kuhn’s limited acknowledgment of Fleck’s influence on his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was due to a foundational incommensurability between the standard conceptual framework for philosophical studies of science and Fleck’s historico-social and praxis-oriented approach to scientific progress. The incommensurability in question constituted an insurmountable tension between the kind of language and thinking manifest in Fleck’s study and the conceptual language evident in Kuhn and characteristic of one might still call the received view’ in philosophy of science. …

Practicing Politics With Foucault And Kant: Toward A Critical Life, Dianna Taylor

Philosophy

This paper problematizes the claim that Michel Foucault’s work is normatively lacking and therefore possesses only limited political relevance. While Foucault does not articulate a traditional normative framework for political activity, I argue that his work nonetheless reflects certain normative commitments to, for example, practicing freedom and improving the state of the world. I elucidate these commitments by sketching out Foucault’s notion of critique as a mode of existence charac- terized by practices of the self, arguing that such practices possess political significance within the context of what Foucault refers to as a way of life, and analyzing points of …

Applying The Categorical Imperative In Kant's Rechtslehre, Nelson T. Potter Jr.

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

During the last forty years there has been considerable discussion of the application of the categorical imperative to derive conclusions concerning particular moral duties and rights in Kant's moral philosophy. Much attention was focused on the four examples of such applications that occur in Chapter Two of the Groundwork, especially the first presentation of those examples, in relation to the "universal law" formulation of the categorical imperative, as opposed to their second run through in the same chapter, in relation to the second formulation of the categorical imperative, on respect for persons. In more recent years the often fuller …

Subjecting Dasein, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

"Das 'Subjekt' ist eine Fiktion," Nietzsche declares in aphorism 370 of Der Wille zur Macht. There is no such thing as an ego, a unitary center of personhood that can be appraised and approved for its virtue and wisdom or blamed for its premeditated transgressions and irresponsible beliefs. Subjectivity does not exist. Despite Nietzsche's pervasive influence, however, the question of subjectivity - the ontological nature, the ethical status, and the epistemological significance of the human subject - has been a preeminent theme in Continental philosophy for the entirety of the twentieth century. Virtually all Conti­nental philosophers have found it …

Hegel, Nietzsche, And The Postmodern Teleological Impasse, Michael P. Tarpey

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Our postmodern intellectual climate is characterized by two apparently contradictory impulses. One seeks to undermine, unmask, and deflate the pretenses of philosophy as traditionally conceived. The result is a focus on difference, surfaces, and fragmentation. The competing impulse seeks to reconcile, integrate, and synthesize. The result is a holistic focus on deeper similarities behind surface differences. I argue that these competing impulses can be traced back to Hegel and Nietzsche. Thus, an understanding of the relationship between these two thinkers can illuminate our current postmodern condition. I argue that Nietzsche and Hegel are remarkably similar in their approach to many …

Sartre And Marxism: Bridging The Gap With Mediation Of The "Third", Shane Wahl

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Was Heisst Das -- Die Bewandtnis? Retranslating The Categories Of Heideggers Hermeneutics Of The Technical, Theodore Kisiel

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

Fearfully And Wonderfully Made, David L. Smith

Phenomenology Center Books

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction & The Department's Philosophical Anthropology (p. 15)

Chapter 2: The First Decennial (1959-1969) (p. 29)

Chapter 3: The Second Decennial (1969-1979) (p. 54)

Chapter 4: The Third Decennial ( 1979-1989) (p. 74)

Chapter 5: The Fourth Decennial (1989-1999) (p. 104)

Chapter 6: The New Millennium (1999-2000) (p. 136)

Getting At The Rapture Of Seeing: Ellsworth Kelly And Visual Experience, Leo J. O'Donovan Sj

Research Resources

Leo J. O'Donovan offers an art-critical account of the American artist Ellsworth Kelly including a comprehensive overview of his career and his attention to color and to vision. O'Donovan explores context and situation to raise questions of painterly color and atmosphere:

Citation:

Leo J. Donovan, "Getting at the Rapture of Seeing: Ellsworth Kelly and Visual Experience." In: Babette Babich, ed., Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh’s Eyes, and God: Hermeneutic Essays in Honor of Patrick A. Heelan, S.J., (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), pp. 295—300.

Husserl's Notion Of The Natural Attitude And The Shift To Transcendental Phenomenology, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Abstracting Aristotle’S Philosophy Of Mathematics, John J. Cleary

Research Resources

In the history of science perhaps the most influential Aristotelian division was that

between mathematics and physics. From our modern perspective this seems like an unfortunate deviation from the Platonic unification of the two disciplines, which guided Kepler and Galileo towards the modern scientific revolution. By contrast, Aristotle’s sharp distinction between the disciplines seems to have led to a barren scholasticism in physics, together with an arid instrumentalism in Ptolemaic astronomy. On the positive side, however, astronomy was liberated from commonsense realism for the conceptual experiments of Aristarchus of Samos, whose heliocentric hypothesis was not adopted by later astronomers because …

Jewish Philosophies After Heidegger: Imagining A Dialogue Between Jonas And Levinas, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Emmanuel Levinas and Hans Jonas draw on their roots in phenomenology and Judaism to answer the ethical nihilism of Heidegger's thought. Though both Levinas and Jonas aim to ground an imperative of responsibility in a Good-in-itself ultimately sourced in God, their disagreements are basic and revolve around three fundamental questions: (1) Can Jews "after Auschwitz" have a theology without lapsing into theodicy?; (2) Is the Good-in-itself within Being or "otherwise than Being"?; and (3) Is ethics the completion of nature or against nature? I explore possibilities for integrating the apparently incompatible ideas of Levinas and Jonas.

Psychoanalytic Praxis And The Truth Of Pain, William J. Richardson

Research Resources

William J. Richardson’s, “Psychoanalytic Praxis and the Truth of Pain” critically reviews Lacan’s conception of science, truth, and language above all. For Lacan, speaking of the “subject of science,” it is as if the entire scientific enterprise – its history, its institutions and all the virulence of its burgeoning power – may be conceived as the function of a single hypostasized, egoless subject: the “correlate” of science as such, taken as a whole. Reading Lacan’s essay “Science and Truth,” Richardson offers a philosophical outline of the strengths of Lacan’s analysis along with its limitations, including a discussion of Heidegger's aletheia …

Sokal’S Hermeneutic Hoax: Physics And The New Inquisition, Babette Babich

Research Resources

“The Hermeneutics of a Hoax: Physics and the New Inquisition” offers a rhetorical analysis and hermeneutics reading of the parodic character of Sokal's "hoax." From the perspective of a philosopher of science, it is argued that it is important to attend both to the rhetorical level of philosophy and science. In addition it is important to consider the culture of status (Bourdieu) as well as the self-reflective weaknesses of the culture of physics including those of (traditionally) physics-dominated philosophy of science. Echoing some of the criticisms and highlighting the points of social advocacy of the late Paul Feyerabend underscores the …

Heidegger Circle Conference 2001 - Proceedings, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Heidegger on Science and Technology. Proceedings of the 35th annual meeting of the North American Heidegger Conference at Fordham University: May, 2001. Convenor: Babette Babich

Heidegger Circle Conference 2001 - Proceedings, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Heidegger on Science and Technology. Proceedings of the 35th annual meeting of the North American Heidegger Conference at Fordham University: May, 2001. Convenor: Babette Babich

Between Hölderlin And Heidegger: Nietzsche’S Transfiguration Of Philosophy, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Back To The F Scale: Milosevic As Authoritarian, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes the "fit" of Slobodan Milosevic's personality with the classic construct of the authoritarian as conceptualized by the initial form of the F Scale.

Notes On David Krell’S The Good European, David B. Allison

Research Resources

So many things come together so beautifully in The Good European, it is hard
to imagine not being moved by it. I discuss what kind of book this is and, more specifically, try to explain, in some detail, just how this work is able to achieve the remarkably performative effect that it has on the reader — at least on this reader. At the outset, it should be said that The Good European is an oversized, illustrated book — a well-known genre — although it is quite unusual to find an example of such work devoted to the life …

Future Philology! By Ulrich Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff - Translated By G. Postl, B. Babich, And H. Schmid, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Ulrich von Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff's

FUTURE PHILOLOGY! a reply to FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S Ordinarius Professor of Classical Philology at Basel „birth of tragedy“

Translated by Gertrude Postl, Babette E. Babich, and Holger Schmid (Greek and Latin translations by Babette Babich and Holger Schmid. Additional corrections to the Greek by James I. Porter and Alexander Nehamas)

Nietzsche And Eros Between The Devil And God’S Deep Blue Sea: The Problem Of The Artist As Actor–Jew–Woman, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

In just one aphorism in The Gay Science, Nietzsche arrays “The Problem of the Artist” in a complex, highly reticulated constellation. Addressing every member of the excluded grouping of disenfranchised “others,” Nietzsche turns to the destitution of a god of love keyed to the self- or inward-turning absorption of the human heart. His ultimate and irrecusably tragic project to restore the innocence of becoming requires the affirmation of the problem of suffering as the task of learning how to love. Nietzsche sees the eros of art as what can teach us how to make things beautiful, desirable, lovable in the …

The Gay Science, David B. Allison

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

On The Genealogy Of Morals, David B. Allison

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

History, Religion And Meaning: American Reflections On The Holocuast And Israel, Jules Simon

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

No abstract provided.

Eros And Transgression In An Age Of Immanence: Georges Bataille’S (Religious) Critique Of Kinsey, James Mark Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper explores the religious implications of eroticism in Western culture since the Sexual Revolution, a period at once applauded for its open and immanent view of sexuality and denounced for its shamelessness and promiscuity. After discussing the work and effects of Alfred C. Kinsey, the father of the Sexual Revolution, I focus on a critical appraisal of Kinsey written by French theorist Georges Bataille (“Kinsey, the Underworld and Work,” in L’Erotisme, 1957). Bataille situates contemporary Western sexuality within a larger historical movement towards the “desacralization” of all aspects of human life: sex, under the scientific gaze of the Kinsey …

A Phenomenological Inquiry Into The Nature Of The Sacred, Ana Maria Janssen

Institute for the Humanities Theses

There is good reason to believe that sacred experience is available to all humans. Yet the question of the sacred is frequently reduced to a debate between believers of various religions. As the focus of contention narrows, the ubiquity of sacred experience is neglected. Keeping this in mind, this analysis of the sacred confines itself strictly to the phenomenon of the sacred as a human experience, without confirming or denying the existence of a god or the veracity of any system of belief. Heidegger's Phenomenology is a useful model for such an analysis precisely because it lays aside conjecture about …

Nietzsche, Heidegger, And The Problem Ofpoiesis, Holger Schmid

Research Resources

Holger Schmid, "Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Problem of Poiesis," New Nietzsche Studies, Volume Three, Numbers 1 & 2 (Winter 1999): 39-52.

Collapsing The Philosophy/Rhetoric Disjunct: Nietzsche, Plato And The Perspectival Turn, Ned Vankevich

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Often overlooked within the standard views of academe lie hidden a number of tacit assumptions. Until the time of Nietzsche, the status of rhetoric as a discourse formation in Western intellectual history was often colored by the unflattering view generated by Plato in a number of his dialogues. In this thesis I present a case that revisits Plato and Nietzsche with an eye toward understanding the reasons why these two highly influential figures in contemporary philosophy adopt the views they advocate. In doing so, I attempt to illumine the reason Plato forms a fundamental split between philosophy and rhetoric and …

The Scope Of Hermeneutics In Natural Science, Patrick A. Heelan

Research Resources

THE SCOPE OF HERMENEUTICS IN NATURAL SCIENCE Hermeneutics or interpretation is concerned with the generation, transmission, and acceptance of meaning within the lifeworld and was the original method of the human sciences stemming from F. Schleiermacher and W. Dilthey. Hermeneutic philosophy refers mostly to M. Heidegger’s. This paper addresses natural science from the perspective of Heidegger’s analysis of meaning and interpretation. Its purpose is to incorporate into the philosophy of science those aspects of historicality, culture, and tradition that are absent from the traditional analysis of theory and explanation, to re-orient the current discussion about scientific realism around the hermeneutics …